Odds are that if you spend any time around indie music in Hudson County, you already know Ryan Gross and Mike Sylvia. You’ve probably see them working the door, manning the soundboard, playing in bands , or just front and center at shows in Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark, and Montclair, rooting on their favorite musicians. But these best friends and roommates do more than just support local music; they release it. Out of a small apartment in Kearny, they run Killing Horse Records, one of New Jersey’s most promising independent labels, and on Friday, January 6, they’ll be celebrating their second anniversary with a star-studded showcase of their roster at Maxwell’s.

The origins of Killing Horse Records couldn’t be simpler. “One night a couple of years ago, I got out of work and went over to Mike’s apartment and said, hey, I’m thinking of starting a record label,” Gross recalled. “And he just said, ‘yes, I’m in!’

“He didn’t really ask me if I wanted to do it with him, but that was all right. I just decided we were doing it together anyway,” added Sylvia.

“Secret Country had been a band for about a year or two at that point, and they were doing really well in Kearny, playing a bunch of places around there, but what do you do, where do you go after that? So we figured, let’s start something, put a label on it, and make us look official, and maybe we can help each other go forward,” Gross said. “So then we started talking to Invisible Lines, who were also our friends and playing a lot of the same shows, and No Pasaran, who had been around for a while by that point but didn’t have any kind of label. So that started Killing Horse, and it just grew from there, with bands like Ben Franklin and the Nico Blues. The idea was just to help friends to move forward in this scene.”

“We had both been doing music forever,” said Sylvia, “playing in bands that didn’t really go anywhere. You’d make a CD and press up a thousand and they’d just wind up in boxes sitting in your house forever. I’d been thinking for a while, especially working at Maxwell’s, about how we could help bands get to the next level, where they don’t have to deal with that graveyard of CD’s or 7-inches. So when Ryan brought that up, I thought, that’s it, that’s what we’re going to do! And we were really excited to get involved.”

To help fund the label, Gross and Sylvia started booking shows at a small venue called The Irish in Kearny. “I was working at Maxwell’s, I knew a lot of bands from the area, so it wasn’t hard setting up shows,” Sylvia said.

“Our big break came when we did Ted Leo and Titus Andronicus there with (Maxwell’s owner) Todd Abramson’s help," Sylvia continued. "We didn’t make a lot of money doing that, maybe we’d walk away with twenty dollars for the label after a show, but we had a lot of fun and made a lot of friends, and that was basically our first year. That’s how we made a lot of connections with people, and it was sort of an outside the box way of doing things, so it was cool. Even though it didn’t make us much money, it was definitely huge for us just in terms of getting our name out to bands .”

Once Killing Horse actually started releasing product, Gross and Sylvia had to wrestle with the question of format. “Personally, I love vinyl,” said Gross “If I could, I would release everything on vinyl, but it’s just real expensive. To do vinyl successfully, you really need bands who tour all the time and can sell records. While it’s becoming clear that CD’s are just becoming coasters, I don’t like the idea of just doing digital releases. Even if a CD is just a means of putting it in your computer and ripping the songs to your iPod, it’s still a physical thing that you get to hold and look at. It still has its functionality.”

The Nico Blues will be one of the bands performing at Killing Horse Records' 2nd anniversary showcase at Maxwell's on Friday, January 6

“And for us right now, it’s still the most efficient way of doing things,” added Sylvia. “It gets the music in peoples’ hands quicker. It’s pretty much become what the demo tape used to be. You can press CD’s really cheaply and not make a million of them, and that really helps. So we’re still doing CD’s. Definitely we have a love for vinyl, and we’d love to be doing more in the future. And digital is a no-brainer for us, it’s something we have to do with every release.”

Killing Horse Records and the bands on its roster – No Pasaran, Invisible Lines, Secret Country, Cicada Radio, and most recently, the Nico Blues – all belong to a new grassroots organization called the Tiny Giants Collective, which helps local bands pool resources and network together to help set up shows and opportunities.

“The Tiny Giants guys and the bands we work with all tend to be influenced by Nineties bands who were big in the DIY (or Do It Yourself) movement, like Fugazi or Archers of Loaf or Pavement,” said Sylvia. “We got to go to shows growing up and see those bands do the DIY thing their way, and we want to emulate that in a way that works today. And it all stems from putting in a year of work and doing shows that made no money. That’s how we wound up hooking up Holy City Zoo and Nico Blues and the other bands that started Tiny Giants; tag-teaming with them has become one of our main production and networking tools. One great thing that just happened is that Bands On A Budget (a popular merchandising company in Asbury Park) just created a special promo code so Tiny Giants members can get t-shirts made at a discount, stickers made at a discount, download cards at a discount. That’s going to be huge for us.”

“This is all about community for us, and that’s how it’s always been,” said Sylvia, “community and connecting the dots. Because New Jersey’s music scene is scattered into all these different pockets. There’s the Lamp Post and Lucky 7 in Jersey City, and there used to be Uncle Joe’s, where a lot of us fell in love with this whole idea of local music. Between Asbury, Jersey City, Hoboken, Newark , even Kearny to an extent, if we can just connect the dots between those places, we can actually make moves. And I think we’ve all got that same attitude.”

While there are other projects on the Killing Horse Records agenda for 2012, Gross and Ryan are focusing on their second anniversary showcase at Maxwell’s on January 6.

“Secret County will be making its debut as an eight-piece that night,” Gross noted. “Myself and Mike’s girlfriend Kate Siegle have recently joined the lineup, with two lead guitars and female vocals added to the mix. No Pasaran’s shows are always a whirlwind tour de force, just a tidal wave of noise, and they unfortunately will be going on a break for a little while, so this will sort of be their farewell show for the time being. We’re hoping they’ll be recording a full-length for us this year but they’ll be going on a hiatus and not doing live shows for a while, so that will make this show extra special. Invisible Lines always puts on a good show, and whenever they bring people out to a show, their crowd is always super into it. This will be the Nico Blues’ first show as a Killing Horse band so we’re very excited about that.”

“What happened with Nico Blues is pretty much exactly what happened with Ben Franklin when they joined the label,” added Sylvia. “Other bands have been friends of ours, but with these guys, we heard their music and we were like, ‘we love it, we just want to work with you.’ And it’s great to be able to do that. That’s why we want to be a record label.“

Killing Horse Records’ 2nd Anniversary Showcase will take place on Friday, January 6 at Maxwell’s (1039 Washington Street, Hoboken.) Admission is $10 and the show begins at 8:30 pm and is open to ages 18+. For more information, visit www.killinghorserecords.com.